[SPOILERS] Woof! Woof! Bad dog! No biscuit! Charadon of the Doviello

[Ellimist]

I've been staying up pretty late the past few days and it's starting to wear on me. I'm going to hold the save for a day.

I owe you guys a post from last turn, hopefully Mist finally posted some screenshots.
Mist must have missed the wolf pack and I was able to capture a worker from him. I'm reconsidering Evermore now that I see Gilden isn't there.
If I take it, Mist's score will almost certainly fall far enough for me to lose barbarian peace. I may as well keep it(I have yet to raze a city, lol) and box Mist in. The great artist culture would probably steal several tiles from Hyll, and he has barbarian cities east and northeast of Hyll. I'd be able to keep units positioned close to him while they are still in my culture(lower upkeep.)
If I move my melee stack toward Hyll, Mist may remove defenders from Evermore, and maybe I can just use Horsemen to take it.

Mist is in slavery so he must have teched way of the wicked. I hope he's not going for Hyborem. :(

[Ellimist]

Okay, I'm about to play turn 93, but before I do, here's turn 92.

Mist must not have noticed my wolf pack, because he left a worker 3 spaces away from my stack and I had a road crew ready. So I get a free worker and visibility on Evermore.

As you can see, Evermore doesn't have Gilden in it. It will have a total of 4 defenders once the soldier of Kilmorph 1S of the city moves into it.
I moved the rest of the stack NW-NW so they're 2 spaces away from Hyll(without crossing the river) but also 3 spaces away from Evermore.

I still might hit either city at this point. I'm considering attacking Hyll with the melee and mounted both after I see what defenders are present. It means going against Gilden, but I may have a decent chance to take him down with my numbers and I will have to deal with him eventually. He was built a couple dozen turns ago so he has a lot more exp to gain from the Hero trait alone.

Even if I raze Evermore, I'm nearly guaranteed to instantly lose peace with the barbarians. This is a big problem because right now most of my cities are defended by one beastman and I found Orthus awhile back and he's near the coast SE of River Heights. If I'm going to lose my barbarian trait, I'll need a couple turns to prepare for it or win altogether, otherwise I'm screwed.
A few cities(Innsmouth, Riverside Rush, Lakeshore Green) are actually empty and I'd prefer not lose them or upgrade nearby workers to beastmen. The two gem mines at Riverside Rush are almost up and will help me a lot, so it would be a direct hit to my economy if the two barb cities next to it send their next stacks my direction.

[Ellimist]

[SIZE="7"]Moving in[/SIZE]



T93 played. I have a lot to report.

At the start of the turn, I saw that Mist had killed my wolfpack with an archer and recaptured his worker. The unit was beyond the reach of my stack but I had 2 horsemen within range.

I recaptured the elven worker and regained vision on Evermore. I then proceeded to move a Son of Asena adjacent to Hyll. It only had 5 units in it... so I moved moved the entire stack in.

I also completed both gems mines at Riverside Rush bringing my gold per turn up from 8 to 18. This was basically the whole reason I founded the city, to offset the massive costs I knew I'd see.

[Ellimist]

[SIZE="7"]Riders Unleashed[/SIZE]


Having revealed that I had mounted units, there was no reason to delay summoning the wolf riders any longer. I decided to go ahead and hire the maximum I could afford, eight. I think I can definitely take Evermore with just the mounted units, and I think I'll also have enough numerical superiority to take Hyll as well if I don't attack across the river. Gilden needs to die eventually, and the odds here aren't too bad. I'm not sure whether I'll have enough strength after taking one city to take the other as well, since Mist seems to be quickly pumping out units.

So, here we go:

End of T93, Ljosalfar territory:

Outside Ljosalfar territory:

Event Log:

[Ellimist]

Assorted turn 93 pictures:


Domestic Info:

Finance advisor:[SPOILER]

Domestic advisor:

Technologies:

[/SPOILER]Global Info:

Mist's civics:[SPOILER]

Victories screen:

Top 5 cities:

[/SPOILER]End of turn demographics and graphs

Demographics:[SPOILER]

Score graph:

Power graph

GNP graph:

Food graph:

Production graph:

[/SPOILER]

[novice]

Exciting! Thanks for the quality updates!

[Ellimist]

Thanks novice.

It looks like I have T94... Time for another one!

[Ellimist]

[SIZE="6"]The hammer is about to strike the anvil...[/SIZE]






Before I get to the good stuff, here's some background stuff.

T93:[SPOILER]

T94:

He heavily whipped both cities. I expected this which is why I've been blocking one of his strongest food tiles the past couple turns. This turn I'll let him work it but hopefully it won't matter. The score decrease is a little tricky though, it puts more of a squeeze on me if I want to keep barbarian peace. I founded two cities recently, on T80 and T87, so I have some land points coming on T100 and T107. Hopefully I can at least keep the barb peace until then.

T93:

T94:

These show how much score he lost, plus the per turn culture output of both cities. I shouldn't be seeing any surprise border expansions, etc.

[/SPOILER]


I decided to definitely attack Hyll with everything next turn, so I moved my armies into place. I moved all units within reach to the forest-hill 1W of Hyll, including two workers. Next turn they'll remove the forest and allow the 3 horsemen that couldn't reach the tile to attack without crossing the river.

T94 units:

I also removed the cultural defense from Hyll. This was one of the main reasons I summoned the giants; I had the technology for the pact and I wanted a way to remove city defense multipliers if needed.

Bombarding Hyll:

It finally occurred to me that my workers outside Ljosalfar territory could be doing something useful. I decided to move them back toward the main army and chop while they did it. I moved each pair 3 spaces along a road and then chopped the forest. I have a couple reasons for doing this. First, the barbarians have pillaged pieces of these roads a few times and removing the forests will make this less of a problem. Second, if I somehow fail to eliminate Mist and he goes into expansion mode, I don't want him having this already forested area.
Limited deforestation:

[Ellimist]

Here's a few more pictures.

T94eot Military adviser:

My road network I've been using to bring horsemen across the map in 2-3 turns:

I'm set up well to put units anywhere I want to put them very quickly.
You might say it's a noob move... but it serves the purpose that I wanted it for. I haven't been able to build horsemen for very long, but I've been able to quickly put them to the front as they are built.


My power spike is bigger than your power spike...
T94 graph:

Last turn(T93):

This turn(T94):

[Ellimist]

Here are the possibilities as I see them.

First-
a) The battles go reasonably well at Hyll and I proceed until I am able to take the city.
b) The battles go reasonably well at Hyll and I proceed but in the end I am unable to take the city.
c) The battles go very badly at Hyll, I stop attacking it, and I aim for a choke instead and figure out a different strategy.

Second, if I am able to defeat Hyll-
a) I take the troops I have left, promote and rest them, and am able to defeat Evermore as well. The end.
b) I take the troops I have left, promote and rest them, but don't see taking Evermore as likely to happen. I aim for a choke instead and wreck Evermore through pillaging and deforestation. I use my workers to deforest every tile in the city radius and basically sit on the city to keep it useless. I probably lose my barbarian peace on or before T100 and I start spamming units in my cities and taking barbarian cities one by one. I tech ancient chants, put up monuments, and aim for a domination victory at this point. Eventually I either kill Mist or get to a domination victory.
c) I have barely any troops left. I choke Evermore as much as I can but try for the same basic strategy in B. Once I lose barbarian peace, my ability to focus everything on Mist is vastly diminished.

If I end up going for domination, I'll need 495 land tiles. Right now I have 73, so that's another 423 needed. If I get the remaining 5 of my cities to pop their borders one time, I'll gain another 46, bringing me to 119/495. I can research drama in 9 turns of 100% science right now, and if I did it would be trivial to get my cities to the third ring. The cities I already have(excluding the capital) would add another 68 tiles if they all expanded to the third ring(187/495). Each new city I found can, if it's landlocked, add 9, 21, or 37 land tiles to the total depending on how far the borders expand. This works out to me needing a total of 9-18 additional cities depending on how far the borders extend in each one. In my current position, I don't see this as being especially difficult once I get more troops built to fight off the barbarians that will probably start mobbing me.

If I start taking barb cities and popping borders, it shouldn't take too long.